How the Flash and the Arrow became Barry and Oliver
by kate882
Summary: They met as vigilantes, and this is the progression of knowing each other from behind a hood and mask to knowing each other as actual people.


"Where have you been?" Barry heard as soon as he arrived on the scene, or rather, as soon as he had the guy that the Arrow had been trying to shoot safely inside a police station and had returned to the scene.

"Why? Were you worried about me?" He asked with a grin.

"Of course not. It's just not like you to disappear for over a week. I thought you'd given up crime fighting or been killed or something."

"Sounds a lot like worry to me." Barry replied, grin growing wider.

"More like I enjoyed the free time I had when you were helping out." The Arrow replied, only dimming the smile Barry was giving him slightly, but it came back full force when he saw the tiny smile on the archer's face.

"Well, as it turns out, super powers don't keep you from getting sick. They can keep you from getting drunk, but God forbid they protect you from the flu. They do help you get over it faster though. I'm right as rain now." He rambled.

Barry couldn't really tell, what with the hood and Bucky Barns style makeup, but he was pretty sure the Arrow was rolling his eyes at him now.

"So, Mr. Arrow Man, wanna take east side of town and I'll take west?" Barry asked when he didn't get a response.

"You've got to stop with the nicknames." The archer complained.

"Maybe if you just told me your name . . . " Barry suggested.

"Are you planning on telling me yours?" The Arrow asked, and Barry could practically hear the arched eyebrow as the other spoke.

"Fair enough." Barry had been fishing for a name for a while. He wasn't above admitting that he may have a crush on the other vigilante. He didn't know his name or face, but they'd been talking to each other long enough between fighting crime that they knew each other's personalities. Which Barry thought was the more important part of feelings towards someone. He still wanted an actual name though.

At any time he could easily just use his speed to pull down the hood, but Barry didn't think that seemed right. He wanted them to be able to trust each other enough to actually be able to share who they were under the mask and hood.

And even with the feelings Barry had for the Arrow; Barry didn't want to be the first to tell. So, he certainly couldn't blame the other man for not wanting to share either. Although, he'd been considering telling just to get it over with, because he didn't think he was going to be the one to last longest in a stubbornness contest.

"I should get going. Crime's not going to stop on its own." Barry said, waving before speeding off.

It was a few days before he ran into the archer again. Not literally, because that might have been the thing that finally did in the hooded vigilante.

They met up every now and then, but it wasn't unusual for the two to go days at a time without seeing each other. They generally just covered separate sides of the city.

Barry knew that the only reason the other had noticed his absence previously would have been reports of crime increase on the side of the city Barry was supposed to be covering and speculation about the disappearance of the Flash. Every now and then he wouldn't show up for a day or two because of crime in Central City or plans he might have, but he generally didn't disappear for a week and a half with the flu.

"John Green! How's it going?" Barry asked, flashing a bright smile.

"The author?"

"Sort of. It was more of a combination of calling you a John Doe, since I don't know your name, and a commentary on your fashion sense." Barry replied.

"Your nicknames are getting worse, kid."

"If you tell me your name I wouldn't be scrapping the bottom of the barrel for names." Barry argued.

"I get the feeling you'd still be doing that, you would just try to incorporate my name into them."

"You're no fun." Barry said, although the archer might be right with the bit about him making up names centered around his real name.

"My job isn't to be fun. It's to protect the city."

"Sure thing, Batman. But you can save the city without being quite so serious." Barry said, laughing slightly. "I think Batman is the name to stick to. You're broody, serious, a vigilante, and don't actually have any powers, but you've got cool weapons. Are you sure you aren't Batman?"

"I can personally assure you that I'm not Batman."

"Well, you would say that if you were Batman."

"Your attempts to find out my name are just getting odder and odder."

"Are not."

"I hope you're not expecting me to say 'are too', because I'm not five."

There was a moment's pause, where Barry usually would have continued the banter, before he took a deep breath and stuck out his hand. "I'm Barry Allen. Nice to meet you. It's generally polite to give a name when someone gives you theirs." He said, using his free hand to pull his mask off.

It wasn't a spur of the moment impulse like a lot of the things Barry did. He'd been thinking about it a lot since he met the Arrow. It was great having his friends at Star Labs to talk to about this stuff, but they weren't out living it every day, seeing all of these things first hand. It was nice talking to someone who got it, even if said someone didn't do much talking about what happened. It was still good to know that he could talk. And since they were generally working towards the same goal of keeping people safe, there wasn't much of a risk of being sold out. It was more a general distrust of people they didn't know that made them keep their identities secret from each other for so long.

There was a long silence and Barry started to put his hand back down when he thought he wasn't going to get an answer, but the hooded vigilante grabbed his hand before he could, giving a firm shake. "Oliver Queen." He let go of Barry's hand and pulled down his hood, revealing his Bucky Barns style eyeliner in all of it's green explosion glory.

"You should get a real mask." Barry informed him with a laugh.

"We finally introduce ourselves and that's the first thing you have to say?" Oliver asked, arching a now visible eyebrow at him.

"It was either going to be that or 'you're one of the guys on my friend's cheat list'." Barry replied with a shrug. "It was a bit of a coin toss in my brain, even I wasn't sure which one would come out."

"Your friend's cheat list?" Oliver asked.

"Oh, yeah. She and her boyfriend jokingly made a list of people they are allowed to cheat with. You made it onto her list. Pretty impressive since they each only got three people." Barry had looked at that list, and had to ask questions when he saw his own name in the mix with Jenifer Lawrence and Scarlet Johansson on Eddie's list. Iris had been laughing too hard to explain, and so Eddie had told him about how one of the name's on Iris' list was someone he knew –apparently he'd saved a film star at his old cop job- so he decided he had to put someone Iris knew on his list too.

"I'm really not sure how to respond to that."

"I chose laughing as my response." Barry offered.

"Now that's just a bit rude. I think I'm worth being on this cheat list." Oliver teased.

"Not at your name. I did laugh at the other names on the list though." He said, flashing a bright smile. "But we've got a city to protect, so let's get going. I'll take north, you take south. You can inform me of how to properly respond to the cheat list next time we run into each other." And then he was gone.

The next time Barry saw Oliver he was pretty caught off guard since neither of them were in vigilante gear.

Actually, Barry was at work. He was talking to Eddie and Iris when Iris' eyes widened, looking in the direction of the door to the police station.

"Fuck. I guess I'm going to have to have that affair with Allen now." He heard Eddie say before he looked towards the door to find out what was causing their reactions.

There stood Oliver Queen, looking around until his eyes landed on Barry and he smiled, striding over. "Can I talk to you for a minute?"

"You came all the way to Central City just to have a word with me?" He asked, mentally freaking out at all the thoughts of what could be happening in Starling City to cause Oliver to come seek him out.

"I didn't know your phone number." Liar. Barry was sure that Oliver and his team had looked up everything they could find on the guy who now knew Oliver's secret. He could probably ask how many detentions he'd had in fifth grade and get an answer.

"Um, okay. We can go into my office if you want. It's more of a lab than an office, but third door to the left. I'm just going to get rid of this." He said, holding up the empty soda bottle he'd been about to recycle when he'd stopped to talk to his friends.

Oliver nodded and walked over to the room.

"You _know _Oliver Queen, and you didn't feel the need to tell me that?" Iris demanded as soon as Oliver had disappeared behind the door and Barry started to walk to the nearest recycling bin.

"I know Oliver Queen. Now I've told you." He replied, tossing the bottle.

"You're supposed to tell me before I find out via him walking in here looking for you!" She insisted.

"Sorry? I've really got to go talk to him though." Barry said, before quickly –normal quickly, not Flash quickly- walking over to his lab/office.

"This is gross." Oliver informed him when he walked in, gesturing at the decapitated head with a crushed in skull residing on Barry's lab table.

"It absolutely is. That's why I'm trying to figure out what happened to him, or rather who, so it doesn't happen to someone else." Barry said, glancing at the head. "Also, the sooner I figure it out, the sooner I can get it out of here." He added.

"So, you have stuff like this to deal with, along with taking care of Central City, but you still come over to Starling City all the time? Why?" Oliver asked, turning his attention to Barry, who had started messing with his lab equipment, since whatever this was about couldn't be too urgent if Oliver was talking about his work with him.

"Well, I first came up there because I was interested in meeting another vigilante. I figured I could get some advice. The first night I showed up you seemed a bit over whelmed with crime, so I figured I'd help out and then maybe ask you questions. But then I realized that Starling City is far more filled with crime than Central, so I figured I'd just keep helping when I could." Barry explained.

"When do you sleep?"

Barry shrugged. "When I can. Sleep is overrated." It all kind of reminded him of college with more of Barry kicking ass than getting his ass kicked. "It doesn't take very long to run to Starling after all." He added when Oliver gave him a look that suggested he was going to try to talk Barry into going to Starling less often and that he could really handle it just fine most nights. His friends at Star Labs had given him a similar talk, citing that the Arrow had been taking care of Starling before Barry even got his powers. Barry saw nothing wrong with losing a little sleep if he got to help people stay safe.

"What are you doing here anyway?" Barry asked after a bit of quite when he remembered that while talking to Oliver was normal for him, talking to him without a mask and hood in the way was not. And talking to him in Central City certainly wasn't either.

"I wondered how long it would take you to ask that."

"I'm starting to wonder how long it's going to take you to answer it." Barry joked.

"I wanted to know if you'd get coffee with me, but I'm starting to see that you really don't have a lot of free time."

"I will be free in twenty minutes for my lunch break." Barry suggested. "For now, if you're going to hang around you can help me."

"Is that allowed? I'm not exactly qualified to be working with forensics." Oliver said with a frown.

Barry rolled his eyes. "I'm not making you do anything hard." He got up and moved across the room, picking up a stack of files and shoving them into Oliver's hands. "Organize these alphabetically, and when you get to the Pentel file put it on the lab table for me." He instructed.

"Why am I doing your work for you?" Oliver asked as he started flipping through the files, shuffling them around to get them in order while Barry got to work with some blood samples.

"I do half of your work nearly every night. No complaining. Especially since you're the one who came into my work place."

And so, Oliver didn't complain. They worked for the next twenty minutes until a knock sounded at the door.

Eddie had noticed how often Barry forgot to stop working and get something to eat, and took it upon himself to knock and say "Allen!" on his way out to have lunch with Iris, to remind Barry to leave.

"Guess that means it's been twenty minutes. Ready to go?" He said, turning to Oliver, who appeared to be just about finished with the stack of files Barry had given him, the one he'd asked for laying on the lab table already.

"Yeah, just a second." About two minutes later Oliver set down the files and turned to Barry. "Ready." He said, moving to the door and holding it open for Barry.

"Thank you." Barry said, smiling as he walked out the door and then started to make his way towards the exit of the building.

He started to walk in the direction of the coffee shop nearby, but Oliver put a hand on his shoulder and guided him over to a sleek silver car instead. "No tall of us have super speed. We drive cars instead." He said to Barry as he opened the passenger door for him. "So, tell me where we're going."

Barry rattled off directions and Oliver nodded as he started the car.

"So, why did you come all the way to Central City just for coffee with me?" Barry asked curiously after they were sitting at a table with drinks and some food.

"You'd think no one had ever asked you on a date. Isn't coffee the most stereotypical date activity after dinner and a movie?"

Barry's eyes widened in surprise and he didn't bother to tell Oliver that he actually hadn't ever been asked on a date. "Is that what this is?" He asked.

Oliver shrugged to try and seem nonchalant about it, but did seem a bit more uncertain as he replied. "It is if you want it to be."

Barry flashed a bright smile. "I would like it to be." He replied.

That got Oliver's confidence right back. "Good. I couldn't exactly ask you out before I even knew your name after all, so it kind of had to wait until now."

"Don't act like you were putting much effort into learning my name. I was the one who kept asking you!" Barry said, trying to sound indignant, which didn't work so well with him laughing.

"I asked you a few times." Oliver defended.

"To get me to stop asking you what yours was." Barry countered.

"My reasoning doesn't change the fact that I did ask you."

Barry rolled his eyes. "I should have given you something more boring than organizing."

"Do you have anything more boring than alphabetizing files?" Oliver asked.

"Absolutely, but I like you, so I probably won't put you through it."

"Probably?"

"I don't want to do it, so yes, probably. Unless you plan to start calling before dropping by so that I don't have things to do when you show up, Lightning McQueen."

"I knew you would just put nicknames to my real name. I don't think I get that one though. Shouldn't the guy who got struck by lightning get the name Lightning?"

Barry's face took on an offended look. "You don't get it? That's it. You have homework. You're watching Pixar movies when you get home, and you're starting with Cars."

They went back and forth like that until it was time for Barry to get back to the lab.

"I'll see you tonight." Barry said, smiling at Oliver as they stood outside of the police station.

"Do your boring paper work tonight. I can handle Starling for a night."

"You just don't want there to be boring paper work for you when you come by again." Barry said with a laugh.

"I want you to take a night off. I would have told you that sooner if I'd known how far away you lived sooner. You're all over the place when it comes to crime fighting. I figured you lived somewhere between Starling and Central since those were your two most popular spots to visit. I didn't think you were running six hundred miles there and back nearly every night."

"Help save people or do paper work that I can put off . . ." Barry said with mock consideration. "No, I think I'll be seeing you tonight. It's not even that long of a run. Hardly takes me any time or effort." He leaned forward and pressed a quick kiss to Oliver's lips to keep him from arguing before moving inside the police station, waving before the door closed.

He did do a bit of paperwork before going to Starling City that night though, so that Oliver couldn't tell him to go home. If he used his speed to do it faster, well no one needed to know that.


End file.
